Rosalia de Castro

Rosalia de Castro Poems

Rosalia de Castro Biography

María Rosalía Rita de Castro, better known as Rosalía de Castro (24 February 1837 – 15 July 1885), was a Galician romanticist writer and poet. Writing in the Galician language, after the Séculos Escuros (lit. Dark Centuries), she became an important figure of the Galician romantic movement, known today as the Rexurdimento ("renaissance"), along with Manuel Curros Enríquez and Eduardo Pondal. Her poetry is marked by 'saudade', an almost ineffable combination of nostalgia, longing and melancholy. She married Manuel Murguía, member of the Galician Academy, historian, journalist and editor of Rosalía's books. (Her married name was Rosalía Castro de Murguía.) The couple had seven children: Alexandra (1859-1937), Aura (1868-1942), twins Gala (1871-1964) and Ovidio (1871-1900), Amara (1873-1921), Adriano (1875-1876) and Valentina (stillborn, 1877). The only two that married were Aura in 1897 and Gala in 1922; neither they nor their siblings left any children, and thus there are no living descendants of Rosalía de Castro and her husband. Their son Ovidio was a good painter, but his early death cut his career short. The date she published her first collection of poetry in Galician, Cantares gallegos ("Galician Songs"), May 17, 1863, is commemorated every year as the Día das Letras Galegas ("Galician Literature Day"), an official holiday of the Autonomous Community of Galicia, and has been dedicated to an important writer in the Galician language since 1963. Relative poverty and sadness marked her life, although she had a strong sense of commitment to the poor and to the defenseless. She was a strong opponent of abuse of authority and defender of women's rights. She suffered from cancer of the womb and died of this illness. Her image appeared on the 500 peseta Spanish banknote.)

The Best Poem Of Rosalia de Castro

They Say That The Plants Do Not Speak

They say that the plants do not speak, not the brooks, nor the birds,
Nor the waves with their roar, not with their brilliance the stars,
So they say: but one cannot be sure, for always when I go by,
They whisper about me and say
"Ah, there goes the madwoman, dreaming,
Of the everlasting springtide of life and the fields,
And yet soon, very son, her hair will be grey,
And trembling, frozen, she sees that the frost is upon the grass

-There are gray hairs in my head, there is frost on the lawns,
But I press on dreaming, poor, incurable somnambulist,
With the eternal spring of life that goes
And the perennial freshness of the fields and souls,
Although some were scorched and although others scorch.

Stars and fountains and flowers, will not murmur of my dreams,
Without them, neither can one admire - nor can one live without them.

Translated by Kate Flores

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